A few more photos

These are the ones we put on the advert. We had rented the place just 25 hours after posting! We had to take down the ad as we were getting too many responses which is nice. I guess Atlanta has too few nice, cheap places.

Pretty much finished

At last!

Just have to get the A/C installed this week and that'll be about it. We had a final push on Saturday to get all clean and painted.

Here's some pics

Bedroom after stripping

Completed bedroom

Living room mid-renovation before the wall was changed

Grim kitchen as we bought it. The sink cabinet was soaked from years of leaks. and underneath was covered in half an inch of a black mold.  The stove leaked and the walls were just concrete render. Not nice. 

Kitchen during renovation. The moldy parts of the kitchen cabinet were removed, as  were  the wall cabinets

Kitchen from the back door during renovation

Kitchen - the other side

Kitchen now with the small walls removed and a fresher look

Hallway into kitchen

Living room as we bought it. All the walls were covered in the thin plywood that's meant to look like wood. No heating, a cheap folding PVC door covered the closet. At least the windows were new and in good shape, but that was about it.

Living  room showing closet and bedroom doors as we bought it. complete with  mildew-y carpet

Living room with the closet door on the right and bedroom door on left.

Living room now. New Fan, lights, floor, etc.

Hall/kitchen as we bought it

Living room and hall towards kitchen. See custom-made shelves in the nook.

Bedroom wall showing the bathroom

Bathroom as we found it. A leak had happened in the bathroom above and caused the ceiling to collapse into the one below.

Old bathroom sink including ceiling debris

During restoration. This was after the bath was removed and the source of the ant-damage discovered. They were nesting in the dirt patch around the drain. I poisoned them, then covered the area with thin-set concrete.

Completed bathroom. Better.

Closet showing smaller closet within. New folding doors.

An aside

So our veggie garden was a bit of a write-off. The varmints took nearly all of the tomatoes, egg plants, zucchini, and pretty much everything but the chiles, and they usually damaged those.

The one thing they didn't yet mess with was this squash. It's an unusual plant in that it grows over a huge area. I think the longest tendrils must be 40 feet, and it goes up trees, fences, anything. It climbed one tree and started to produce a couple of these things:

It's getting on for 5 feet long now. Pretty cool

Flooring

This was a lot harder than i thought it would be. The instructions told that you could just attach the long edges of the strips together, then tap the short edges together. This just made the ends chip and not join squarely so i had to remove a little material then glue each end together. It was a real hassle.

And the floor is not level so i had to level using underlayment in places to absorb the voids. I am not sure it's perfect, but hopefully it'll last. one spot in the closet is not good, but it's a closet so we'll have to live with it.

Much laminate, some on special

The bedrom

Just one more

It was not the last tiling job as we decided that laminate flooring in the kitchen was a bad idea. Here it begins, more to follow.

The Last Tiling Job

Hopefully this is the last one, anyway.

We had thought about doing the whole wall, but it was too much hassle and cost so we just tiled the kitchen backsplash and the area between the stove and the vent hood

Steff working the invaluable saw

Preparation

Nearly finished

It's since been painted and some shelves have gone up. More pictures to follow...

Counters

These are hard to install. It's easy enough, although nerve-wracking to install the lengths of material, but there  are some catches.

The rounded edge does not mesh with the side of another piece of material when creating an 'L' shape so you have to trim that off, if you do that, you have to mitre the corner to make the 2 rounded profiles join cleanly.

The other pain in the ass is that if you cut the top with the plastic side up, it chips out badly. You have to turn it upside down and cut it like that, it still chips, however, but less so.

Then you have to join them. They're too heavy for glue, and screws are very difficult to get in due to the shallow angle, they'd come out to easily and don't apply enough pressure. The answer is to use 'mitre bolts' I didn't that that's what they're called, but the shop lady understood my ramblings.

I spent hours measuring and cutting the shape i needed into the tops, then brought them together, upside down and spent ages more routing out the channels for the bolts:

Channel routed out and the bolt ready to go in

Closed up and glued

We got a range from Sears for less than half price due to damage, and a dishwasher from Craiglist, and this is how things look now. 

Better than this, I think. 

Proto-kitchen

Back to Ikea.

Last time we went we went en masse, on a Saturday and regretted it. We had to take advantage of a soon-to-end sale on kitchens so we ordered with a friend to get the discount. It was worth it, but it took 8 hours to get the stuff ordered, collected and separated into 2 piles. 

This time we were smarter and went on a Wednesday evening. We weren't even there for 2 hours and spent time browsing the stuff we don't need, as is required at Ikea, and got to the collection area to find our stuff waiting. Unprecedented!

Our Suburban carried it home so work could begin:

Plenty of room

The prepared space

Cabinets installed. Rooney disinterested

Now we need some appliances and I have to figure out how to install the counter-top. More to come...

Laundry room update

So we painted it and put down the flooring. Looks a bit better, I think. 

Drywall

Now it's starting look like a real house. 

Here's a few pictures of the place with drywall and with primer. 

Bedroom in primer

Hall towards kitchen

Kitchen and hall

Hall and living room before primer